Michael Taylor

Nearly three months ago, we wrote about the fabled Ecurie Ecosse, a private Scottish racing team that started in 1951 and fielded a wide assortment of cars, including several Jaguars. The team disbanded in 1971 and its cars and transporter ultimately ended up on the auction block at Bonhams in London this past weekend. They [...]
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After a couple of hours of driving the 2013 Mini Cooper Paceman, it occurred to me that this is a car that should fold its tents and lurch away; I wouldn’t miss it. Then, after driving it for a week…. and here I should be writing the forgiveness paragraph, wringing my hands in shame and [...]
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It’s hard to do a top ten list when there are dozens of cars to choose from at the annual San Francisco International Auto Show, so I picked my top ten list with an eye toward what is relatively new, or unusual or appealing. I will say, up front, it’s an eclectic and personal list. Yours [...]
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Nissan has always been known for making excellent family cars — sedans, coupes, SUVs and the like. But it has also had its share of consumer-targeted performance cars, like the fabled Z series, which started with the Datsun 240Z in the early 1970s and continues with today’s 370Z. So it’s no surprise that Nissan offers [...]
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Sixty-three thousand dollars for a Volkswagen? The People’s Car? Yep. That’s what it costs to get you into a 2013 VW Touareg Hybrid sport utility vehicle. We’ll get to the car in a minute, but first I think we should take two steps back and look at the evolution of VW’s marketing history. VW achieved
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It’s that time again, that shank of the year when the two big California auto shows display their wares – hundreds of new cars and trucks to beguile you and let you decide if you want to make that horrendous decision to purchase a new car, the most expensive thing you’ll buy after a house,
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Spy photos and information from the Web site Ride Apart show us the new Honda CTX1300, a cruising bike that draws from the ST1300 (engine) and body and frame setup of the CTX700. And it looks pretty fast. The idea is a little like that used by Audi, where you stuff a humongous engine
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It may be fair to say that the new, redesigned 2014 Mazda3 was cobbled up by a team that took the best of the old Mazda3 and combined it with what they thought today’s driver might want in a compact car that sells in the $20,000 range and, perforce, has to live up to Mazda’s
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When we think of Dashiell Hammett, we think of the echt hard-boiled crime writer, still famous, generations later, for “The Maltese Falcon” and the Continental Op. It turns out, however, there’s a little-known Hammett connection to cars, which legitimizes this item for Topdown readers, who mostly steer (so to speak) through blog items that have
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It’s one of those stories that make you think that sometimes things work out the way they should. In 1967, some lowlife stole Donald DeVault’s 1953 Triumph Tiger 100. Last week, DeVault, who is 73, was told that federal law enforcement agents discovered his stolen bike on the docks in Los Angeles as it was
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